Operations and material management
Assignment
On
Collaborative manufacturing and commerce
Collaborative manufacturing and commerce
Collaborative manufacturing
The need for coordinating distributed manufacturing operations is greater than ever. Whether driven by the disappearance of inventory buffers as supply chain improvements kick in, because acquisitions need to be brought into the fold, or because of global expansion and competition, manufacturers are increasingly seeking solutions to the problem of managing distributed or networked operations.
Manufacturers are feeling pressure today for a number of reasons. As supply chain improvements wring buffer inventory out of the supply chain, manufacturing is increasingly on the critical path to customer satisfaction. In order to perform, operations personnel must see all relevant demand information in time for efficient response. Enterprise level systems and managers need manufacturing data in real time. Regulatory compliance requires documented, reliable processes. Lack of collaboration across organizational and business boundaries can lead to redundancy and higher costs.
Meanwhile, performance expectations are higher and companies are recognizing that in order to improve, they must understand and often automate their cross-functional business processes.
The Term Paper on Riordan Manufacturing: Supply Chain Design Paper
Riordan Manufacturing, a leading global manufacturer of plastic containers, parts, and fan parts, is wholly owned by Riordan Industries, Inc. Riordan’s fan manufacturing plant was purchased in 1992 when it was located in Michigan. In 2000, the company moved its fan manufacturing operation to China where it now resides. Riordan schedules manufacturing of fan parts based on forecasted production ...
Collaborative Manufacturing Management (CMM) is the practice of managing the key business and manufacturing processes of a manufacturing enterprise within a collaborative value network. CMM builds upon a collaborative infrastructure, business process management services and real-time strategic business management tools. It leverages critical applications, production systems and enterprise information, to maximize the responsiveness, flexibility and profitability of the manufacturing enterprise. For many manufacturers, especially larger distributed or global operations, there is a critical need to explicitly consider some of the process and information flows at the network level.
An analysis of the collaborative value network must first establish the topology—how the individual nodes connect to each other—as well as the specific relationships among the nodes. Nodes include every entity in an enterprise’s supply chain—plants, distribution, contract manufacturers and suppliers. A contract manufacturer will have a different business relationship than an enterprise manufacturing plant or a supplier, for example, but all may participate to some degree in the operations level information and process sharing. Manufacturing capacities and abilities, as well as logistics capabilities and constraints, should be represented here. Real-time information flow and distributed real-time business processes are key dimensions for establishing the topology.
The analysis of CMM should next look into the production and distribution nodes. This models detailed information about equipment, resources, utilities and costs. Much has been written about strategies for continuous improvement at the individual plant level. But there is a growing recognition that many functions typically thought of as plant issues are becoming—or have become—functions that need to be supported across a number of physical sites and business relationships.
The Research paper on Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management Research Report
Another possible connotation for the SMEs is the small manufacturing enterprises. Small and medium enterprises, both in size and shape, are not uniform across the globe. This asymmetry comes in the way of any effort of their integration. The way they are defined depends on the stage of economic development and the broad policy purposes for which the definition is used. According to a World Bank ...
Some examples of these distributed functions include: product genealogy, quality management and compliance; real-time or demand-driven scheduling; costing and profitability; parts design, product engineering data and change management; and manufacturing performance information.
Global operations management solutions must be effective in the local plants, but they must also roll up into central or hierarchical views. Global calendars, multi-language, role-based views, as well as multiple media format, global time stamps and legal, regulatory, and financial compliance must all have local dimensions.
Manufacturers with distributed operations and those participating in a supply network with high requirements for synchronization and collaboration should look for operations level solutions that are designed for multi-plant reporting and synchronization. Collaborative networked operations management requires a world view that explicitly deals with distributed manufacturing.
Collaborative Commerce
Collaborative Commerce enables retailers, suppliers, and distributors to share information with one another in a standard business language, benefiting all members of the supply chain. This initiative includes the processes, technologies, and supporting standards that allow continuous and automated communication of electronic information between trading partners.
In today’s global commerce environment, the need for accurate, standards-based information is critical for conducting business efficiently. By standardizing the way information is communicated, and by having all trading partners accessing the same information, the opportunity for errors decreases dramatically, costs are reduced, and supply chains operate more efficiently.
Collaborative Commerce is based on the GS1 System — a suite of integrated supply chain standards. The GS1 System is accepted worldwide, accommodating the needs of all trading partners within the global trade community. The standards allow for products, services, and raw materials to be sourced and sold anywhere in the world.
The Research paper on Supply Chain Procurement Information 2002
1. Introduction This report begins with an introduction of collaborative supply chain systems and narrows down to procurement process to further discuss the information and systems required in the collaborative e-procurement. A cost-benefit analysis is done based on a published hypothetical company case study. On top of that, wide research is done before the report is able to identify the key ...
One motivation for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to engage in e-commerce is the hope to exploit their own core competence and to profit from partners’ abilities and capacities through collaboration supported by the Internet and its services. However, in this sense the current trading exchange model implemented in virtual market places is not really a good place to go.
The critical issue with virtual market places is that the exchange model makes the customer’s order the central point of its operational goal. Buyers interested in a given product or service category can search for any number of offers made by potential suppliers via one portal.
Basically, every buyer can inspect every seller’s offers and so can every competitor. Brand or particular properties cannot be a central consideration, else the buyer would transact directly with the supplier of that brand. Thus, the price becomes the tie breaker because other characteristics of the transaction, like settlement and post-sales aspects, are either not known or excluded from the way the transaction is handled. Sellers can compete only by reducing the transaction costs and if these tend to zero they must reduce their margins in order to meet lower price alternatives.
As an alternative, a new exchange model is increasingly discussed and favoured: It is called Collaborative Commerce. According to the Collaborative Commerce model, companies give up absolute competition and engage in collaborative communities, which focus on the customer instead of simply the customer’s order. These communities will bring new aspects into competition, such as fulfilment and customer care, and will also create new value chains. In such value chains, the B2C relationship gets a backup through B2B collaborations, i.e. a company plans to win competition in collaboration with its partners. This is not a very new idea but it gets new aspects through the Internet, resulting in value ‘nets’ which provide new channels, products and services. First DEEDS Policy Group meeting, Collaborative e-commerce where in the Internet is the facility, which integrates the demand chain and the supply chain is arguably the most leading-edge B2B relationship model. Its basics are outlined in figure . The model allows companies, particularly SMEs, to face competition in global electronic markets by means of joining collaborative communities, according to the motto ‘win with your partners’.
The Business plan on Customer Service Essay
Excellence in customer service is the objective of all organisations wishing to be successful. However, there is often a gap between customer expectations and management perceptions of customer expectations. Organisations often fail to get close to their customers and correctly read their expectations. Customers expect certain things when they walk into a business, and those with the highest level ...
Collaborative Commerce Technologies
Technologies supporting collaborative communities must operate efficiently in an open environment with practically no geographical, cultural, and technical limits. This type of environment is characterized by the fact that participants are autonomous, i.e. they can come and go, and act independently and self-contained. For a specific purpose they may be willing to participate in loosely coupled communities, taking some role and responsibility and/ or providing some services. In such communities, they may negotiate and fix some agreements, perform some tasks, provide and/ or access some information, and access or offer some resources, while others are restricted to their own use. Consequently technologies used in such environments must support loose coupling, autonomy, and flexibility on the one hand, and agreement making, trust
and security on the other hand. The following outlines some technologies that are considered to specifically support such environments.
